Frequently Asked Questions
What about cups?
Some ingredients cannot be measured accurately with volumetric units. It is impossible, and because of this I choose not to provide volume measurements for those ingredients. For example, measuring flour by volume is extremely inaccurate. Since proportions matter in baking, I don’t want to give you instructions that depend entirely on luck. I aim for reproducibility in my recipes, and using accurate measurement is the only way to make that happen.
Buy a scale, and eliminate uncertainty. I promise it will cost less than the ingredients you’ll waste when trying to bake by volume, and your baked goods will be consistent. No one likes baking something perfectly one day, and getting different results the next time you try it. Just buy a scale. Just buy a scale. Just buy a scale.
I'm not sold, are there other benefits to using a kitchen scale?
Yes! So many. You’ll dirty fewer measuring cups, you can actually weigh all the ingredients directly in the same bowl. You can portion dough more precisely for uniformly sized cookies and pastries.
Why are you such a salt snob?
It isn’t about snobbery, I promise. Diamond Crystal salt is something of a standard, and since salt can vary drastically in the amount of brine flavor and in the size/solubility of its flakes, it is easiest to just use the one brand. That way if you do need to find a suitable substitute, it will be easier to establish a substitution ratio from my brand to the one you prefer, and you can rest assured it will work for all the recipes you find here. If I didn’t note the type of salt I use, you’d always have to play it by ear. In recipes where the salt is largely for seasoning like cookies, that can get dangerous since you’ll need to eat raw dough to truly get a sense for what it means to “salt to taste.” In recipes like bread where the salt is actually vital for the texture and formation of gluten, inaccurate salt measurement will ruin your bread. Over salted bread gets tough, and briny, while under salted bread is slack, flat, and flavorless.
Some bread is “undersalted,” intentionally, like Pane Toscano, but the Tuscany’s favorite flavorless oil sponge is a rant for another time.
Salt is also a very powerful ingredient, and most recipes intended for home cooks only use about 5 grams. Home scales aren’t quite sensitive enough for quantities this small, and the margin of error is very small. So, I use volume measures for salt, and as such the coarseness of the salt is even more important. A teaspoon of diamond crystal salt is roughly equivalent to 1/2 teaspoon of iodized table salt, as an example.
Also, Diamond Crystal is better for recipes with sugar work. It doesn’t contain a chemical added to most other salt that can cause melted sugar syrup to crystallize. It makes confectionery sugar work feel hopeless, and Diamond Crystal won’t do this. If it crystalizes when using Diamond Crystal, it’s much easier to diagnose the problem and reliably fix it without throwing out the whole batch.
These recipes look awfully similar to one I saw somewhere else…
Yep, they’re recipes. That happens. If I consciously took inspiration from another recipe author or adapted directly from another recipe to work with another method or preparation-style, I do my best to note that in the description. If you feel that I’ve taken a specific recipe from elsewhere, please let me know. It’s decently likely that you’re right, and I’ve been making it so long I’ve forgotten that it wasn’t my own, or simply forgot to add attribution. I make mistakes, but I’ll absolutely correct them if brought to my attention.
Lots of Amazon links, huh?
Yep, and I make money from them. It’s not much, and if you’re uncomfortable with that I encourage you to bypass my affiliate links and search for that same product on Amazon in another tab. My recommendations are genuine, regardless of whether or not I get a kickback from my readers acting on them. I don’t get paid by the manufacturers to praise their products, the only bias I have is that I use the products I recommend and using the same equipment and ingredients will help you get results that are closer to mine… also I don’t have a ton of patience for poor kitchenware performance. If they don’t work, I won’t use them, or suggest that you do either.
Do you have any gluten-free recipes?
Not currently, but if you have adapted any of my recipes to be gluten-free or otherwise allergy/intolerance-conscious, please let me know! I’ll give your recipe a try, and post a fully-credited link to your adaptation if it has been published somewhere, or post it here credited to you.